Gordon Campbell on disinterest in violence against women

It seems a
simple enough concept; counselling is meant to help victims
to recover from their experience. The conditions for getting
access to counselling are not supposed to leave the claimant
feeling so re-traumatised that they give up and go without
the counselling they need – or pay for it privately
instead, if they can - rather than subject themselves to
hostile grilling by the Accident Compensation Corporation as
to whether they truly need and deserve the service.

We can
now quantify some of the
fruits of this process. Yesterday, Dr Barbara Disley
released the second monitoring report of ACC’s progress in
implementing the 14 recommendations made by a 2010 Sensitive
Claims Clinical Pathway review. According to the report, ACC
has made “excellent” progress on only one out of those
14 points, and “good” progress on another six. In other
words - and despite having had 18 months to get its act
together - ACC is falling short on half the 2010
recommendations, and this failure is having dramatic
consequences for those ACC claimants who are legally
entitled to support.

For example? As the Greens ACC
spokesperson Kevin Hague has
pointed out, the Disley report shows that in 2011 only
3.6 percent of “sensitive claims” lodged (eg for
counselling for sexual abuse) were accepted by ACC, down
from 60 percent in 2008 when National became the government.
There could hardly be a clearer sign of a new policy mindset
within ACC that victims of sexual abuse can sink or swim,
for all it cares.

Not surprisingly, the victims of abuse
are giving up in the face of ACC’s stance towards them.
Not only has the rate of claims approved fallen
dramatically, but the number of claims being lodged has
also fallen by 36% since 2008, For those that do
persevere, there are chronic systemic failings within ACC,
as Disley points out in her report:

While there have
been improvements, including the ability of the support
counsellor to attend these assessments with the client, the
narrow range of tools applied to determining mental injury
and the limited number of professional groups who can
administer these tools leads to bottle necks and delays in
cover determination….ACC needs to urgently review the
assessment processes within the adult claims coverage
context and broaden the range of tools and professional
groups capable of undertaking these
assessments.’’

Ah, but allowing the assessments
to be done outside the narrow circle of like-minded
clinicians on ACC’s payroll would run the risk of people
being genuinely and independently assessed on their needs
– rather than in accord with ACC’s unsubtle desire to
get them off the books. ACC’s restrictive approach to
entitlements has been spelled out in any number of ways in
recent months – quite spectacularly by ACC general manager
Denise Cosgrove in a presentation to an actuarial conference
in Australia last year that only
recently came to light:

Ms Cosgrove said ACC had
faced major financial and other challenges but had since cut
claims costs by $3.2 billion.

ACC managers had
"taken the low-hanging fruit", but now faced more complex
claims which made rehabilitation and return to work "a bit
harder", the conference transcript said. There had been
targets for "actuarial release" and "stellar results", but
there had also been adverse media coverage of issues such as
"sensitive claims", involving sexual abuse, and elective
surgery, she said.

Damn those adverse media reports
on how ACC is handling “sensitive claims” involving
sexual abuse and elective surgery! In ACC’s skewed
universe, there are not people who have been harmed with
needs to be met and legal entitlements to be delivered - but
only a risk that things may get out into the media, and
that’s the process that needs to be managed with
care.

Where, you might well wonder is Jo
Goodhew, the Minister of Women’s Affairs in all of this,
given that the vast bulk of “sensitive claims” victims
are women? Ironically, Goodhew
is right now at the United Nations in New York, where later
today she will present New Zealand’s seventh report to
the United Nations under the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women.

Mrs
Goodhew will also attend meetings to discuss best practice
and new ideas for progressing gender equality, particularly
in the complex and challenging areas of reducing the
remaining gender pay gap and increasing women’s safety
from violence.

Right, increasing women’s safety
from violence. At home, ACC is hard at work ensuring that
few of the women who are unsafe from violence get
access to the counselling they deserve. Talk about junketing
around giving lip service to the problems. Here’s Goodhew
in one of her rare public forays into Women’s Affairs
work, with
a press release to mark Rape Awareness Week earlier this
year:

Research has shown that around 20 percent of
girls in New Zealand have experienced some form of sexual
violence. A history of sexual violence increases their risk
of experiencing further sexual violence and other forms of
violence. For example, child sexual abuse victims are
approximately twice as likely as non victims to be sexually
assaulted later in life. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs
is investigating how we can prevent re-victimisation, better
understand the impacts on victims, and better support these
girls and women,” Mrs Goodhew says.

Well, maybe
Goodhew and the Ministry of Womens Affairs could bestir
themselves to comment on what is happening to the victims of
sexual violence when they engage with ACC – because that
process seems to be all about re-victimisation, about
misunderstanding the impacts on victims and about
denying support to those girls and women. Let's
see. The last visible sign of interest in this subject from
the Ministry of Women’s Affairs appears to have been late
in 2009, in
the course of what was basically a literature
review.Still, the document did contain
this observation at para 2.4.1:

Long-term needs:
Counselling and support to manage any post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) effects. Some victim/survivors may not be
ready to access counselling support until years after the
sexual assault, or will become more aware of the effects
over time.

By the sound of it, ACC policy is
systematically ignoring such long-term factors. It is being
told to do so by the government, in order to cut costs.
Perhaps the people in government who are being paid to
represent women should start to earn their money, and should
stand up and oppose such
practices.

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